200. Would you like to give us some examples?
(Mr Porritt) One of the things we are looking at,
at the moment, is the whole Green Paper on Planning. Although
there are obviously some quite proper and perfectly convincing
references to the importance of continuing to protect the environment
through development controls and through planning processes, you
could not possibly point to that Green Paper and say that it is
fully understood what sustainable development is all about. It
simply is not embedded in the conceptualisation of a planning
system; it does not work its way through all the different recommendations.
I thinkand perhaps we have started off, a bit unfortunately,
on the negative end of things rather than the positive end, because
there are a lot of positive things to be said as wellthere
are question marks about the degree to which government departments
have understood the degree to which sustainable development needs
to act as the framework within which policies are pursued rather
than being seen as something that is added on to everything else
that they are doing. I think that is the crux of what the Commission
is trying to work away at and certainly forms the main element
of our work with central Government, which is to say "Stop
thinking about this as an add-on. Some of the language is right,
some of the policies are right, some of the practice is right,
but what you have got to do now is to see sustainable development
as the overarching framework within which these things need to
be brought together."

201. In order to take the whole debate forward,
we are preparing for the Johannesburg Summit, and you are now
a member of the MISC18, or whatever the Committee is called (you
have got a seat on that). Do you feel that we have really got
an opportunity to embed these environmental concerns right at
the heart of this whole wider development agenda? How frustrated
are you? How hopeful are you?
(Mr Porritt) I think that goes to the heart of the
role that the Sustainable Development Commission was given when
it was set up. No complaint about our role, we were given a very
constructive, open-ended, remit to be fully engaged in all aspects
of both government, and other sectors, in developing sustainable
development in the UK. We were not given a particularly strong
steer on the international scene and, indeed, have no real locus
through the formal committee processes around WSSD. So what we
are doing is pursuing a engagement role much more informally through
DEFRA, through relevant committees, through a meeting coming up
with the Deputy Prime Minister, through our engagement with UNED-UK
and the NGO effort, but it is interesting that we do not actually
have a formal role in that regard as that was not in our starting
remit.

202. Perhaps, for the record, I should say that
I appreciate that it is the inter-departmental advisory committee,
and that you are not actually on MISC18. Presumably that is key
to setting the agenda to making sure that all the environmental
issues etc are embedded.
(Mr Porritt) Absolutely.

Mr Barker

203. Could I just develop this theme slightly.
I noticed in the memorandum that you sent us that you said: "However,
we are as yet nowhere near the kind of structural and policy changes
that will need to be made to the economy and to society to deliver
sustainable outcomes". "The key Rio principle `Think
global, act local' has been adopted only in a very patchy way,
and tangible government leadership is needed to deliver the real
outcomes that the Rio process demands". Do you actually think
we have our own house sufficiently in order to go to Johannesburg
with credibility and urge this agenda on other more reluctant
nations?
(Mr Porritt) I think our house is more in order now
than it was, let us say, back in 1997, to take a date. I think
that bits of the house have been better ordered since that time,
and I think there is a process of incremental ordering (to carry
on with the metaphor) that is encouraging. There is a seriousness
of intent in trying to do that. If you were to ask me to put a
tick in the box to say the UK Government can go out to Johannesburg
with everything hunky-dory back home, and speak to other governments
on that basis, I think that would be an extremely unwise position
for the Government to take to Johannesburg, as there are many,
many areas where the house is not in order. I think it is interesting
you picked up on that part of the memorandum we put to you, because
it is this question of quite detailed systematic approaches to
embedding sustainable development process and practice in what
goes on. I think it is easier for me to give you a couple of very
quick, concrete examples.

204. In fact, that was my next question, to
give us a couple of examples of failures and, also, successes.
(Mr Porritt) Let us just look, very, very quickly,
at three quick areas. Regional Development Agenciesvery
powerful regeneration bodies now in Englandhad a sustainable
development remit when they were set up as well as all the economic
remits that they had. They are now in the process of revising
their economic strategies. If one actually looks at the degree
to which guidance from DTI has helped the RDAs to get on top of
its sustainable development remit, you would have to say it is
not; it just is not doing the job; it has not helped the boards
and the executives of the RDAs to think more carefully about the
combined outcomessustainable development outcomes as well
as economic outcomesthat its statutory remit asks them
to do. So it is there, they have created the platform but the
platform is not being used. The same with local government. One
can say that in terms of the new emphasis on the well-being powers
that local authorities have to push forward community planning
and the new emphasis on local strategic partnershipsall
of these things theoretically should be very helpful to a sustainable
development framework, to thinking more sustainably about these
issues, but in practice a lot is falling through the cracks, so
that the guidance on local strategic partnerships, for instance,
very, very grudgingly refers to the importance of Local Agenda
21, which was one of the great outcomes of the Earth Summit back
in 1992. So it is almost as if you can put in these minimalist
platforms and then you think the job is done. We would argue very
strongly that it is good the minimalist platforms are in there,
but they are not worked as much as they should be until they are
properly embedded in the decision-making processes at each of
those different levels. You could talk in the same way about the
business community and how there is a lot of exhortation from
Michael Meacher and, indeed, from the Prime Minister himself about
business doing more on this agenda, but falls short of creating
the kind of framework which would permit business to do what it
does on a more environmentally and socially responsible basis.

205. I cannot think of a better word so I will
use the word "blame", but where do you think the balance
of blame lies between central Government and local government?
(Mr Porritt) I think that is difficult because, as
always, it is such a patchy picture. If you look at the local
scene, you could point to some really fantastic, leadership authoritieschampions,
or beacon authorities, to use the prevailing jargon.

206. Who are your champions?
(Mr Porritt) I am not allowed to say that! There are
known champions in the local government scene which have been
working away on this stuff since Rio, ten years ago, and have
succeeded in mainstreaming it into the corporate work of that
local authority as a whole. You would have to say that that has
largely been done off the back of their own understanding of why
that will work for them as a local government body. At the other
end of the scale, as this Committee will know, there are dozens,
possibly hundreds, of local authorities who are doing no more
than ticking whatever box it is they are asked to tick and playing
around with sustainable development tokenism of the kind that
is bringing no benefits to anyone. So where does the blame lie
there? You have to say the blame lies there with the individual
local authorities for not taking advantage of some of these new
modernisation initiatives to bring themselves into a very different
way of doing business.

207. If I could change tack slightly and go
from local government to the global environment, you describe
climate change as the single most significant environmental, social
and economic challenge facing the planet. Yet it may not make
it on to the agenda at the Johannesburg Summit. How concerned
are you about that and what should this Government be doing?
(Mr Porritt) It need not necessarily be damaging to
the effectiveness of Johannesburg. There is an on-going international
process around climate change, as you will know. There are a large
number of elements, agenda items, statutory processes and targets
in play already. The fact that it is not going to be a major item
on the Johannesburg agenda does not mean to say that it is not,
as we have described it, the single most important issueset
of interlocking issuestouching on the global economy, on
the environment and on society. I do not think it is a tragedy
if Johannesburg does not have it as one of its absolute mainstay
agenda items because it will certainly come in through a whole
lot of other concerns about resource use in general, about equity
issues, about the shape of the global economy. That is where,
I suspect, climate change can be dealt with as well as dealing
with it as a headline issue in its own right.

Mr Francois

208. Mr Porritt, also in your memorandum you
said to us that "Government has yet to embrace sustainable
development as a central driver of policy formulation". If
that is your view, what changes would you like to see to the structure
of Government in order to do that? How do you see your own organisation,
perhaps, playing a part in that?
(Mr Porritt) I think what we would like to see, first
and foremost, is a much greater level of ownership within each
government department that this is something that they have to
do as well as DEFRA. For historical reasonsand this is
always a big issue, which is standard throughout all western European
countriesbecause sustainable development has been seen
to come largely out of an environmental history and a set of environmental
issues, it tends to get confused, even now, with environmentalism
of what I would describe as the old-fashioned, narrow-focussed
kind. So when sustainable development is being driven out of an
environment department, there is an understandable temptation
for other government departments to say "Sorted. That is
their job. There is this little unit called the Sustainable Development
Unit, beavering away at the heart of DEFRA with a remit to take
sustainable development out to the whole of the rest of government,
but we can leave it to them." With a few exceptions, and
there are some important exceptionsthe DTI, for instance,
has addressed these issues through its own strategy and through
a team of people within the DTI; the DETR is looking at these
things, we are talking to the Department of Health about it, and
the Ministry of Defence would undoubtedly want to put its hand
up and say "We are beginning to address some of these sustainable
development issues"by and large the level of ownership
at the most senior levels in each of these government departments
is inadequate if one is talking about sustainable development
as the overarching framework for promoting government policy.
That is the starting place. So the starting place, for us as a
Commission, is to track the degree to which the understanding
of sustainable development is embedded in each of these different
departments, where the championship lies and how effective DEFRA
is being in doing its job to get government as a whole to take
up sustainable development. You will have seen in our memorandum
that something we are keeping a very close eye on is the role
that DEFRA has been properly exercising to persuade other departments
to take their share of this burden. That is the starting point
we would look to. Without that and without the Prime Minister's
own significant leadership contribution to that, through No 10
and his influence over government process, with the best will
in the world a lot of other government departments will go on
saying "This is not mainstream for us; this is someone else's
thing".

209. You mention in your memorandum that you
would like to see the publication of individual department sustainable
development reports. How likely do you think that is and what
sort of impact do you think that would have towards the objectives
you have just outlined?
(Mr Porritt) How likely? We have genuinely welcomed
the sustainable development focus that has come into the Comprehensive
Spending Review this time round. It was there in the earlier Comprehensive
Spending Review but it was not really used pro-actively as part
of the process. It is there this time. Every government department
has to indicate the degree to which their spending plans will
impact on sustainable development, and we think that is very important.
We regret that that will not be made more publicly available.
We will not be able to see how the Treasury has assessed the sustainable
development analysis coming from those departments. So there is
not going to be an easy way of following up on what was an important
process development; it could just remain within Treasury and
that will be the end of it. How likely is it that they will move
towards reporting? I do not know. I think an awful lot of people
are quite tired of certain levels of exhortatory enthusiasm from
government into the private sector berating FTSE 100 and FTSE
350 companies for their failure to report properly on an integrated
sustainable development front. They look to government and they
think to themselves "We get an annual sustainable development
report which aggregates the net contribution of all these government
departments, but these are huge entities in their own right. If
they are asking the private sector to do that, why the hell should
they not do it themselves?" I think there is not a lot of
joining up going ona walking-the-walk bitthat is
so important. Think of the Department of Health: a massive, massive
presence in all of our lives, in the economy, in people's communities,
the impact on resources, on transport, on pollution issues, on
public healthvast impact on quality of life throughout
the UK. For the Department of Health not to be publishing a report
seems peculiar when it would expect every single pharmaceutical
company in the land to publish a report and when it would expect
others involved in wealth creation at different points. It seems
to me there is a failure to join it up in a way that we would
like to see. Of course, the Government is reluctant to mandate
this reporting process, so it may not necessarily mandate it even
for its own government departments.

210. You used the phrase "not walking the
walk".
(Mr Porritt) On that score.

211. Yes, I understand that. Our Committee has
asked the Treasury to be allowed to see these reports so that
we can take a view on them, and they have also said that they
will not allow us to view them either. I am sure we intend to
continue to press the Government on this matter. Can you give
us some assurance today that you expect you will continue to press
them too?
(Mr Porritt) Indeed, and we have been very clear about
that. We have been very supportive of how that process has helped
mainstream sustainable development in the Comprehensive Spending
Review process (I think that should not be forgotten, it is an
important innovation) but the next stage is equally important,
because as that data becomes available it can be used to look
for ways of improving departmental performance.

212. Can I also just press you on planning?
You mentioned the planning Green Paper and some of your concerns.
For all the fine words in the Green Paper, very often in planning
the key issue is where does the decision power ultimately lie?
It is a very big thrust in the Green Paper that a lot of the decision-making
power is going to be taken away from local communities and is
going to be centralisedsome of it regionally but a lot
of it with central Government, particularly for the large projects.
That is inherent throughout the Green Paper. What is the point
of telling people to think globally and act locally if you continue
to reduce the amount of actual influence they have on the planning
decisions? Is this a point that your Commission is prepared to
make to the Prime Minister?
(Mr Porritt) We have commissioned some research into
this, which we are looking at. We happen to have one of our regular,
plenary meetings with the Commission next week in Belfast and
one of the major items on the agenda is to look at the Green Paper.
We will then come up with our opinion about that, as part of the
consultation process, and we will certainly seek to make those
views known as widely as we can with as influential a set of people
in government as we can. I think there is an issue here which
has not been properly reflected in the way ministers have talked
about this, and that goes to the heart of governance issues, which
is a strong and prevailing set of concerns about weakening governance
systems in the UKfalling votes, lack of participation,
indifference towards the democratic process and a larger number
of disaffected people. I am not seeking to change our understanding
of sustainable development away from social, environmental and
economic, but governance issues are central to making sense of
this way of looking at improving quality of life. You cannot detach
the governance issues from the planning debate, because the planning
system is one of the principle mechanisms available to people
at the local level for engagement in decisions that touch their
lives.

213. If the Chairman will indulge me, because
this is a particular bug-bear of mine but you have touched on
it, I think it is an open secret that all of the political parties
are finding it difficult to get suitable candidates to stand for
local elections. One is not exactly giving away the trident codes
by mentioning that. One of the reasons is why should people go
out and vote in local elections if they see that the people they
are electing for local government actually have fewer and fewer
decision-making powers, and planning is an absolutely central
point in the whole debate? How are we going to get people to give
up three or four nights a week of their spare time for very little
money to act as local councillors if, when it comes to planning
decisions that really affect their localities, all the power has
been taken away from them?
(Mr Porritt) I have to be a bit careful here because
I do not think the Commission has a collective view on this as
yet. I need to draw a line between me and the Commission. We have
got a collective view on a lot of things and we will soon have
a collective view on planning issues. I can assure you that collective
view will link up to that governance challenge absolutely head-on,
because if we are not putting the planning debate as part of the
broad debate about the vitality of our democratic systems in the
UK at every level then it is a disconnected debate. I think that
we would be very keen to join those two things up. I am conscious
we have not signed off on our contribution to that yet.

Mr Jones

214. You spoke earlier and rather disparagingly
of narrow environmentalism, which is interesting considering your
background, Mr Porritt. I wonder how useful a concept sustainability
is. During the last decade its use has grown enormously and a
huge industry has grown round it, of which you no doubt are part.
We went last year to Canada and we found a vast amount of work
going on and a vast amount of reporting going on within the various
departments and within the different federal governments in Canada
around sustainability, but we could not really draw much conclusion
about what actually was being achieved, apart from an awful lot
of paper being produced. The problem, surely, with sustainable
development is how it is defined, and because its definition is
so convenient and changeable it means everything and, therefore,
means nothing at all.
(Mr Porritt) Were the Canadians able to shed any light
on what they thought they had achieved through their process for
you?

215. Vast amounts of literature.
(Mr Porritt) Which was unimpressive, as far as you
are concerned.

Mr Jones: The problem with having a concept
which means different things to different people is that people
can then point to achievements in one region and call them sustainable
development but if they have not got a phrase for sustainable
development they could still point to the same achievement and
call it something else.

Chairman: The great block in Canada was actually
the governance, because we found for example that everybody in
Toronto said there should be a public transport system, but there
could not be a public transport system because the city of Toronto
disagreed with the province of Ontario, which disagreed with the
Federal Government of Canada, and no one could agree. So, despite
all the words produced, nothing happened.

216. The point I am trying to put to you, perhaps
aggressively, is that within Canadaand we know of other
countriesrather than address the really difficult issue,
say, on transport, sustainability and the vast array of information
and concepts around sustainability could be used in order to say
"Well, we are doing this. We are not actually achieving anything
on transport but just look at that, because we have got some wonderful
literature on sustainability". It is a concept ill-defined,
which is the problem.
(Mr Porritt) Yes, I think it is a problem for those
who like it to remain a problem. There is undoubtedly a gap between
the conceptualisation of what sustainable development means at
a theoretical and a policy formulation level and the operationalisation
thing. There is always going to be a gap, and it would be very
wrong of anyone who feels passionate about sustainable development
to argue that it will solve all your difficult decision-making
problems for you, and it is a substitute for the kind of political
and economic judgment that you are being asked to make as legislators
or community activists; that by just putting the data into your
sustainable development black box, out the other end comes this
magic answer. Anyone who has thought that sustainable development
is of that kind, undoubtedly set off with an illusory notion of
what it is. I am sure that does not apply to you, but just in
case it might apply

217. It may apply to me. It applies to a lot
of people.
(Mr Porritt) Maybe it applies to people in Canada,
in which case they will have come up with some very muddled outcomes.
I feel very strongly that sustainable development is a concept
of enormous significance at this stage in the development of the
industrial revolution, if you like. The reason why I feel that
is that we had a model of progress that largely permitted us to
grow our economies without taking a great deal of care about some
of the environmental and social externalities which were generated
as a consequence of that industrial process. The upshot of that
has been that we are now trying to back-fit our model of industrial
progress to take account of these externalitiesto use the
economists' jargonand to seek to go on growing both GDP
and per capita well-being without those externalities. I know
of no other conceptual framework that enables one to bring together
those concerns more effectively than sustainable development.
It does so for two good reasons: one is you have got to weight
these things in such a way that you are pressing for integrated
economic, environmental and social benefits and you have got to
do it for today's generation and for tomorrow's as well. There
is no other conceptual framework that enables better decision-making
to emerge against those two sets of challenges than the one provided
by sustainable development. I only urge you to look at what is
happening in other parts of the world; to look at the impact of
sustainable development, for instance, on business decision-making.
Look at those companies that are now beginning to get serious
about sustainable development and are beginning to integrate their
economic and financial obligations to their shareholders with
their sense of obligation to society, to communities and to the
wider environment, and are able to call on the theoretical framework
of sustainable development to provide them with a very powerful
rationale for integrated accountability to different stakeholders.
That was not there before sustainable development arrived as a
conceptual framework within which they could locate those issues.
The debate we have just had about government: what would be an
equivalently powerful convening principle to persuade the DTI
and the Department of Health and every other bit of government
that it was not just pursuing a narrow focus, it actually has
overarching generic responsibilities to promote people's well-being,
improvements in their quality of life, without the externalities
that had previously been an automatic consequence of economic
development?

218. With respect, I do not think you need to
invent the concept of sustainable development in order to give
the Department of Health a reason for promoting well-being.
(Mr Porritt) That is not quite what I said.

219. It is what you said.
(Mr Porritt) It is not what I said. I said that it
is open now to the Department of Health to use the concept of
sustainable development to do what it should have been doing and
what legislators should have asked it to have been doing for decades
but somehow had not.